Hiroshima by John Hersey

I recently finished reading a book called Hiroshima by John Hersey.

As the title of the book implies, the book is about the use of the first atomic bomb by America on Hiroshima in 1945 where close to 100,000 people were killed.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the author’s use of real people to tell the story of Hiroshima. This added a wonderful amount of believability to the story but also gave the reader the opportunity to feel for the characters in the book, because we knew their stories were real. What I would have liked for Hersey to do differently is, I wish he had put his characters in first person. I think this would have added another level of empathy from the reader for the characters because it would have felt like we were actually experiencing the actual events from the point of view of the characters.

The other thing I felt was missing from Hiroshima was some bigger context to the atomic bomb being dropped. Although I agree that there has been much written about the American perspective of the events and tragedy, I would have liked to read a bit more about the history of conflict regarding Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima, Nagasaki etc.

From a journalist’s perspective, I think there’s a lot that I could learn from reading this book. I think the amount of work and research, time, effort, and resilience it would have taken Hersey to compile all of the information and interviews he did to write this book must have been very much. I think from Hersey, journalists can learn that interviews can be the backbone of a really good story.

I watched a BBC TV documentary on Hiroshima before called Hiroshima: The First Weapon of Mass Destruction. I found the book by Hersey and the documentary to be similar in that they both used eyewitness accounts to tell the story about what happened during that time in Japan. I did find the documentary more effective for the sole reason that the visual clips (although many were computer generated) helped give the story context.

Quite interestingly, when Hiroshima was published in The New Yorker in 1946, it filled up the entire issue. There were no other articles or cartoons and it sold out the day it was put on newsstands. Many radio stations around the world read the text out loud and the article was published into a book soon thereafter.

I really enjoyed reading Hiroshima. I found it to be a stimulating, exciting, thought provoking, and emotional read. I would definitely read it again or recommend it to anyone who wants a good history lesson.